....missing the point.

I've read two articles in the past few days, one in the Times and one in Private Eye, noting that all the media coverage around the government's planned reforms of the NHS in England have focused on structures, powerbases, accountability, splits in the coalition, budgets, privatization and so on and yet there has been no mention at all of actual clinical care.

Alice Thompson notes in the Times that the most important aspect of care in any hospital from the patient's point of view is simple nursing. M.D. in Private Eye notes the shockingly poor standard of diabetes treatment in hospitals as revealed by the National Diabetes Inpatient Audit, despite the fact that diabetes is our most common chronic illness.

Some of the highlights;

1) 31.0% of sites had no inpatient diabetes specialist nurses

2)69.4% of inpatients with diabetes had not been seen by a member of the diabetes team

3)37.1% of inpatients with diabetes experienced at least one medication error

Maybe highlights is the wrong word. Perhaps if GPs had control of the system they would be able to force a change in culture - I imagine that GPs know a good deal more about chronic illness than hospital staff who deal primarily with acute illness. Or maybe not. It would certainly be nice if this kind of stuff was the focus of the debate rather than party politics.